Not for the first time, I am taking issue with inequalities raised by some of the more inexplicable Legal Services Commission rules and regulations.

A parent or a person with parental responsibility is automatically passported from a means test in special Children Act proceedings.

Wider members of the family, including grand-parents are not.

My client, a grandmother, currently cares for her granddaughter who is the subject of care proceedings and, indeed, the local social services placed the child with my client and, for the time being at least, fully endorses that situation.

My client has now been made a party to the proceedings and is about to apply for a residence order.

Her earnings have been assessed at being marginally more than the limit for public funding.

The proceedings are complicated and clearly my client needs legal representation but cannot afford it.

Is it not ironic that a father, without parental responsibility and without any dealings in his child's life at all, could obtain a public funding certificate even if he were a wealthy person, yet grandparents in a position such as my client cannot.

It is time that the Legal Services Commission had a rethink.

Neil Donald, Ross Williams, Hitchin